It's designed to be somewhere in view of the person using it. People with ADHD (myself included) struggle with time blindness and just starting tasks in general, so this helps with that (I hope) by:
a) making the start of your tasks just a simple press of a button
b) keeping your progress of time and your deadline right in front of you.
It's just another one of pomodoro apps that I made specifically for myself and wanted to share in case someone wants to use it as well :)
> It's designed to be somewhere in view of the person using it.
Then it really shouldn't be a browser app, it needs to be a local app that runs in the taskbar.
I've made two of these in the past:
V1, browser based: the browser simply wasn't viable because there's no taskbar timer.
V2, Bash+zenity script to run locally, pops up a uncloseable, uncoverable and omnipresent (across all workspaces) window, with a progress bar showing the time as it elapses[1], and properly sends desktop notifications. A much more functional experience than V1 which was invisible while I was working, stuck on a single workspace (I have nine in a 3x3 grid) and frequently didn't send notifications.
V3, Next iteration, local application without a window but with taskbar integration for timer display. Might just decide to hack zenity to provide a 'taskbar' widget.
Arguably a case for ambient electronics. We need to start making physical devices with smarts.
And for easily distracted people, you might want a physical timer that also synchronizes with your devices. Set a timer for the stove, then forget you're baking and try to leave the house, your watch or phone needs to get the alert.
Sometimes too gently. And with watches that last 24 hours between charges, trying to do something in the early evening that takes hours could run you into a dead battery.
Really is better if you have multiple devices to remind you. Right now if I set a timer on one iOS device it tends to go off on the one I'm using. Give me more of that, including ambient devices.
> the browser simply wasn't viable because there's no taskbar timer.
Chrome supports badges on chrome extensions. E.g. I've built a chrome extension that shows an "On" badge when it's activated in the current tab. Via the same mechanism you could display the number of minutes remaining.
I think most popular browsers support badges in standard mode (no extension or webapp mode needed). A fallback would be to change the favicon and/or the window title and tab color.
> Then it really shouldn't be a browser app, it needs to be a local app that runs in the taskbar.
Counter use case - browser apps are superior unless you can invest in building strong cross-platform capabilities (like Obsidian.md)
I'm constantly jumping between machines and operating systems. I've often been on Linux, Windows, and Mac in a single day. Or moved from desktops to laptops.
> I'm constantly jumping between machines and operating systems. I've often been on Linux, Windows, and Mac in a single day. Or moved from desktops to laptops.
Hence why I want to make a V3 that is a local app (some sort of hacked up zenity won't work, though).
For this particular use-case, functionality beats portability.
A suggestion I have (as a time-blind ADHD person): try to hijack the browsers’ Picture in Picture mode, or display a timer icon in the window bar or tab favicon.
Unless you keep your browser tab open, you can’t see it. A “gauge” icon in the browser bar would be enough to actually be in view without being distracting. Repackaging as a plug-in would give you a tab-free icon.
Screen-level overlays work nicely if you can take the native route (or use sth like Tauri). I have a goat showing up on the screen at random intervals and telling the to slow the fuck down when I speak:
I would package this as a local nativefier app and have it running as a dedicated app/window for it to make sense for me.. This as a browser tab would just get lost. Is there source code for this?
For me it would make more sense as a (native) desktop app, personally I like the idea of attention / flow timers but not if they're another browser tab (or electron app.
One idea to explore, is using analog-looking timers instead of the digital-looking ones. I’ve heard this recommended by a number of “time blind” folks.
Went to your docs, saw the counter, pressed the button and saw a delay on increment when clicking a button (the simplest utility imaginable).
I don't want to hate, but if THIS has delay I don't even want to think about more complex state updates.
We are working on improving the performance, we are still pretty new but there are a few different ways we can speed state updates up. For state updates like pressing the counter a lot of times it can been seen, we will improve this.
Facebook, unlike other big tech companies, has no financial incentive to share postmortems. Others are bound by SLA agreements with business customers.
Well, as someone that has an app that had degraded performance due to their SDK failing to talk to Facebook servers. I FOR ONE would really like an explanation.
Then collaborate with your peers to get enough leverage over Facebook to demand this.
It’s not like FB’s market position let’s them dictate terms in an unfair way that would require a certain governing force to step in and rebalance the tables……
Allegedly, this was a BGP update gone wrong that locked out their remote access. And the people with physical access didn't have the necessary privileges to fix the issue.
What do you mean by "optional"?. You are including it [2] [3] [4] as one of the options (not re-implementation of the original paper [1]) and it is one of the dependencies [4] (Prophet [5] is an open-source library built by facebook research).
I think we should distinguish between science/open-source and policies when we mention open-source projects.
If I put out a buffet where some items are vegetarian and some are not, I don't advertise it as a vegetarian buffet with the excuse that the nonvegetarian foods are optional.
That’s actually exactly how vegetarian buffets work.
If you want to avoid Facebook with this library you can. That may not be the case with every library so folks who care about such things appreciate the callout. If you don’t care you don’t have to.
As a side note when in Brazil I felt like "vegetarian" food meant "just little bit of meat" and "caipirinha without sugar" meant "just don't mix (the layer of sugar at the bottom)" :) Did love it though.
Seems interesting, but why don't you give premium to everyone who signs up for at least the first day/week?
How can I tell if I will like it if I can only listen to piano without signing up for yet another service.
a) making the start of your tasks just a simple press of a button
b) keeping your progress of time and your deadline right in front of you.
It's just another one of pomodoro apps that I made specifically for myself and wanted to share in case someone wants to use it as well :)